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Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know (Hardcover)

Description

Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers--and why they often go wrong.

How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to each other that isn't true?

Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland---throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don't know. And because we don't know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his #1 bestseller, David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.

About the Author

Malcolm Gladwell is the author of five New York Times bestsellers--The Tipping Point, Blink,Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath. He is also the co-founder of Pushkin Industries, an audio content company that produces the podcasts Revisionist History, which reconsiders things both overlooked and misunderstood, and Broken Record, where he, Rick Rubin, and Bruce Headlam interview musicians across a wide range of genres. Gladwell has been included in the TIME 100 Most Influential People list and touted as one of Foreign Policy's Top Global Thinkers.

Praise For…

"Malcolm Gladwell has made a career of writing
books that drive the cultural conversation. His latest offers a provocative
take on what close encounters between strangers have to teach us, and how we
can get better at reading each other's signals. Talking to Strangers is a must-read. It investigates why we so often
misconstrue others' intentions and how those errors can have unfortunate, even
catastrophic, consequences...I love this book... Reading it will actually change
not just how you see strangers, but how you look at yourself, the news--the
world...You're touching on so many profound themes-themes that are especially
urgent now when the world seems so topsy-turvy...Reading this book changed me."—Oprah Winfrey, O, The Oprah Magazine

"Gladwell brilliantly argues that
we should stop assuming, realize no one's transparent and understand that
behavior is tied to unseen circumstances. Powerful advice on truly getting to
know others."—People, Book of the Week

"Mr. Gladwell's towering success rests on the moment when the skeptic
starts to think that maybe we're wrong about everything and maybe, just maybe,
this Gladwell guy is onto something...Talking to Strangers is weightier than his
previous titles...The topic--and Mr. Gladwell's message that we should all
approach strangers 'with caution and humility'--has fortuitous timing, given a
political climate in which we can hardly stand to interact with people who
watch a different cable network."—Amy Chozick, New York Times

"Malcolm Gladwell interviews brilliant people, generates powerful
insights, writes like an angel, and has earned a massive and admiring audience.
He has a keen eye and a witty flair and he's one of the best observationalists
of a generation. Gladwell is a big-picture thinker who helps us make sense of
the human condition."—Bob Brisco, WebMD Magazine

"The latest intellectually stimulating book from the acclaimed author. Every few years, journalist Gladwell assembles serious scientific research on oddball yet relevant subjects and then writes a bestseller. Readers expecting another everything-you-think-you-know-is-wrong page-turner will not be disappointed...Another Gladwell tour de force."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Chock-full
of gripping anecdotes from the recent and forgotten past. He uses these
riveting stories to offer up bite-size observations about how we engage with
strangers. The stranger is not easy; she is never as transparent as we believe.
Gladwell's case studies are thrilling."—Maggie Taft, Booklist